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TV – A PROSPECTUS

by Louis Kronenberger

Two phenomena a half century apart have exercised the greatest influence on 20th-century Americans as social animals. The first was the arrival of the automobile which, aside from its more practical aspects, stimulated all America to move about, whether five miles to a picture show, 25 to a bathing beach, 50 for the sake of driving or 200 to call on Grandma. With the coming of the automobile there took place in the strictest sense a social revolution.
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I have so much love for this show. I was even in an episode! When I was in third grade they came to my school and filmed my class doing a spelling bee. I came in second because I was unable to spell “screeching”. I put an ‘a’ in there somewhere.

There has never been a television series that actually helped preschool children get ready for school.

Now there is.

On SESAME STREET, he’ll learn the alphabet, for instance. How to count—and how many is 2 or 3 or 4. What words like up & down, over & around mean. How to begin to reason. And how he is different from a lizard or bear or the child next door—and how like them too. Read the rest of this entry »

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Now, more channels, plummeting prices for new backyard satellite-TV antennas

Better quality, easier-to-use features, and affordable do-it-yourself kits make home Earth stations practical

By SUSAN RENNER-SMITH

The view from my hotel room was so incongruous that I burst out laughing. A score of gleaming dish antennas squatted in the parking lot below me, facing the southern sky. It looked as if a giant mushroom crop had sprouted in the starlight. Then I saw the glowing TV set near one dish. People crouched around it watching, I knew, a program broadcast by some far-off satellite. Read the rest of this entry »

The Little Network That Might

Fox is still around after a year, stumbling but scrappy

Well, no one ever said starting a fourth network would be easy. The Fox Broadcasting Co., Rupert Murdoch’s ambitious effort to compete with abc, cbs and nbc, has weathered enough tin-pot tragedies in its brief life to fill a month on Another World. Joan Rivers’ much publicized attempt to challenge Johnny Carson with her own talk show ended in ignominious cancellation after seven months on the air. Read the rest of this entry »

TELEVISION TODAY

A—Two-unit experimental portable television receiver gets a tryout on the beach at Steeplechase Park, Coney Island. Intended for use at picnics, beaches or on boats where power lines are not available, this set is operated with a separate portable power unit which may be seen behind the receiver. The 3-in. screen is located at upper right in the TV set. All controls are simplified and mounted on the front panel within .easy reach of the operator. Both units are housed in neat sheet-metal carrying cases Read the rest of this entry »

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Optical vs mechanical: the coming battle of the video-disc players

Several incompatible disc machines will tease the eager buyer next year

By JOHN FREE

If you’re confused by ads citing advantages of one videotape machine over an incompatible competitor, brace yourself. More befuddlement is brewing. Early next year, makers of two— and perhaps three—mutually incompatible video-disc players will each be shouting the virtues of their products while cleverly knocking the others.

Battle lines between two differing disc technologies took shape in the early 1970′s with demonstrations of early lab prototypes. Despite attempts at standardization, the lines hardened for two types of disc players: Optical, involving touchless disc playback with a laser beam, and mechanical systems, requiring contact between the disc and pickup stylus.
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TELEVISION MOUNTAIN

THE DEER and bushy-tailed squirrels that live on Mount Wilson have been watching a strange new forest of “bat-wing” radiators and pylon antennas replace the trees that formerly grew on the mountain top.

Seven new television stations and five new FM stations are grouped together on top of a small ridge not far from the famed Mount Wilson Observatory where the 100-inch Hooker telescope is located. Except for one transmitter that is a short distance from the others, all the stations are within an area about half a mile long and a couple of hundred yards wide.
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The device on the second page is interesting. It’s sort of like a mechanical version of an LCD screen.

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Life Size Radio Movies Are Coming

C. Francis Jenkins is inventor of the original movie camera and holder of more than 400 patents, many of them in the field of radiovision. He predicts for the near future life size radio movies and radiovision of news events which may be projected on theater screens at the actual instant they happen. Jenkins describes the present status of television and the lines along which he is working.

by C. FRANCIS JENKINS Famous Inventor

WITHIN a short time, possibly within a year, I expect to see movie screens showing life size pictures of news events as they are happening. We are working now on that problem. We may not be first to solve it, but it is only a question of time until some one does, and it is quite possible that we may be first.
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“Human-Eye” Camera OPENS NEW WAY TO Television

Views in Your Home of News Events and Historical Gatherings May Be Possible with New Broadcast System

By Alden E Armagnac

ENGINEERS in a Camden, N. J., laboratory, the other day, examined a mysterious little black box on a tripod. A lens protruding from the turretlike top gave it the appearance of a camera, but such a camera as never before had been built. Ten years of intensive research had achieved, in this instrument, man’s nearest mechanical approach to the human eye.
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THE TV ACHIEVEMENT OF THE YEAR!

hallicrafters dynamic tuner

…with the “Precision PRINTED CIRCUIT”

It’s HERE… NOW… ready to bring you the Finest Television in History! A $2,000,000 development!

A PICTURE So Sharp! So Wonderful!…
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I saw Bob Barker on the cover of a tabloid at the grocery store last night and it reminded me that I had this article scanned.

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…”It’s Been Fun”

By Bob Barker

If you have been watching Truth Or Consequences since I started doing the show daytime on NBC, you are nine years older than you were when you and I first became friends. It has been almost a decade. I have done about 2,300 shows and interviewed more than 12,000 contestants.

Now, after all these years, NBC has cancelled Truth Or Consequences. Frankly, I am disgusted. I think the network should have given the show a chance to get off the ground.
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LOOK AND LISTEN

By JOHN FREE

Voice-controlled hi-fi

At a recent Toshiba press conference I noticed a stack of mini-hi-fi components [PS, Jan.] with a microphone attached. But the mike, I learned, wasn’t plugged in to record music. Instead, it lets you store 15 verbal commands in a microcomputer memory. After that, the hi-fi system responds only to your voice, enabling you to perform 19 functions—operating a cassette deck orally, controlling volume, or selecting tuner channels, for example.
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